


Syncopated Synchronicity

by EarthedLightning



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Drifting, Getting Together, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), M/M, Pre-Canon, Synesthesia, building secret jaegers with your lab partner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthedLightning/pseuds/EarthedLightning
Summary: Hermann builds an illegal Jaeger and drifting has unexpected consequences.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 13
Kudos: 39





	Syncopated Synchronicity

Apocalypses are singularly colourless affairs. Grey skies give way to grey seas; concrete and iron rise up in towering, featureless walls. Even the sparks from the endless droning construction eventually seem to lose their shimmer. Staring at the crowded equations stretching above him, he has a sudden and childish wish for a packet of multicoloured chalk, if only to set one tiny thing right in the endless end of the world.

\--

“It’s this bureaucratic nightmare, man, I mean every time I go up there and propose something, something incredible, something that could obviously change the fucking world, it’s like they just can’t see it, you know? Like oh, it doesn’t fit with our projected goddamn profit margins, oh, we can’t give you access to that equipment because it’s classified, why bother having it be classified? I’m literally, out of every single human left on this planet, undoubtedly the most qualified to do this work and I’m paid to be here! I’m not like some neuro-bio spy intent on hacking PPDC’s database of Kaiju DNA for my own nefarious gains, my gains are not nefarious, they’re extremely reasonable and helpful and I don’t know why the board can’t see that. I mean they give me these samples, right, from the attack in Canada? These are weeks old. How can I be expected to draft a coherent theory of alien consciousness without better tissue access? How is this lab not priority one for Kaiju specimen delivery? They keep cutting our budget to build walls that we all know will never work, I keep emailing the head engineer of the San Fran Wall to explain how strong a Cat 4 Kaiju actually is and he just will not listen to reason, he’s all oh, but I have this new ultra-strong alloy that will definitely work, it’s obviously not going to work, you know what works? Jaegers. Sort of. But dude, this theory – have I told you my theory? I’m gonna tell you, I was up all night thinking about it, I think it could really change how we understand where the Kaiju are coming from, psychologically I mean, not physically, not literally, that’s your junk and it’s not nearly as interesting as what I’m thinking now. So I was watching this old sci-fi movie, and like the movie’s science was bad science, obviously, don’t worry about it, but it may have actually had a point about one thing and that thing, that thing, is the idea of multi-skilled cells on a scale we never see on planet Earth. Like the idea that a cell that’s ostensibly a muscle cell could also have neural links, way stronger neural links than we get in human biology. I mean we know Kaiju are so big they need two brains to move around, right, like a dinosaur –“

“There were no dinosaurs with two brains, Newton.”

“Come on dude, you think I don’t know that? You think I actually think dinosaurs had two brains? The analogy works and of all our outdated paleontological theories it’s easily one of the most fun, so just let me have this, okay? So like I was saying, we know Kaiju have two brains, we know that’s where the majority of their cognitive processing is going on, but what if their neural tissue is actually functionally just amalgamating cognitive information from every single one of their cells and they’re actually way more weirdly advanced than we think they are? Or not “just” amalgamating cognitive information, like that’s clearly reductionist when you think about what brains are capable of, but I mean, they just move so smoothly, and do you ever notice that they seem to know what’s going on behind them, as if their dermal cells were somehow collecting ocular data? You can see it if you watch the footage of the attacks sometimes, if you did things like that, which you don’t, because interfacing with the world in a real-time, physical way is just way too passé when you’ve got like, numbers, or whatever –“

“Newton, will you shut up?”

“I mean let’s be real, you could stand to loosen up a bit –“

“Newton. If you have quite finished –“

“I haven’t, but carry on.”

“Although I do not think it particularly wise to tell you this while you are in such an excitable state, lest you cause some sort of injury to yourself, to me, or to the array of unique and expensive equipment that surrounds you, I have some rather important news for you.”

“Well, I doubt your very important news is going to be as wickedly insightful and life-altering as my theory, but fine, you have my attention.”

“Thrilling. Newton, I am sure that you recall the discussions we have had over the years about the limitations of current Jaeger technology –” 

“Jaegers have insane levels of potential that are wasted every day and it absolutely kills me, man.”

“Quite. In that case, taking our shared frustrations with Jaeger technology into account, you may be interested to know that I have built you – I have built us – a Jaeger.”

“You… what?”

\--

They’ve been venting their Jaeger-related frustrations to each other on and off for roughly three years now, and while their discussions generally take the form of heated arguments, Hermann is fairly confident that they actually agree on most of the problems with the program. The primary problem, as far as Hermann is concerned, is that the Jaegers are not remotely piloted by algorithm, and must instead be controlled from within using human pilots and the drift interface. He would perhaps also be willing to admit, privately, certainly not in front of Newton or anyone else, that his disdain for the Jaeger system may be partially rooted in his own rejection from the Academy, but his concerns are legitimate regardless of their origin, he is certain. Jaegers should not have such a high human cost, Hermann remembers insisting to Newton, we must take human pilots out of the equation entirely.

Newton had blanched and immediately launched into an impassioned and expletive-filled tirade against drone technology – “investing that kind of money into drones? Into drones that are weapons? You gotta see how dangerous that is man, I mean you just. You just absolutely cannot fucking do that, okay? You wanna talk about human cost? Have you maybe considered, I don’t know, the human cost of drone warfare?” – until Newton’s voice had reached such a volume and pitch that Hermann was having trouble seeing clearly.

For some time, their arguments had continued apace. While Newton had point-blank refused to accept an entirely automated solution, he had agreed that the presence of actual people inside the Jaegers was one of the greatest oversights of the program – “second only to the fact that Jaegers are like, not remotely optimized for water-based fighting, I mean, a giant robot standing waist-deep in the water, fighting a giant sea creature? That’s just fucking laughable, man, I mean I don’t understand why I wasn’t consulted on this.” Hermann, on every occasion where Newton had brought this up, spat back that the Jaegers were designed to match human proportions in order to allow pilots to intuit the controls with relatively little prior mechanical knowledge in a compressed timeline. 

Eventually, however, a compromise had begun to take shape: would it be possible, they had wondered, to build a Jaeger that was indeed remotely controlled, but still piloted, as usual, by humans? Humans drifting in the relative safety of the Shatterdome, piloting a Jaeger from kilometres away, and thereby eliminating human casualties from the equation provided the fights didn’t make landfall. The question had simmered between them, an appealing hypothetical for Newton but for Hermann, a revelation. 

Hermann had broached the idea with the Marshal after a sleepless night working out a rough model for a long-distance drift interface, flushed with the idea of saving lives, of building something new. The Marshal had taken one look at his rushed proposal and immediately shut it down. The Jaeger program was going well, he said, and this project could undermine their success at a crucial time. He had insisted that Hermann focus on his study of the Breach “so we can end this thing once and for all.” Hermann had tried on several other occasions to get his point across, to no avail. Hermann is, by nature, respectful of authority. He has spent his life figuratively genuflecting to authority figures and he felt, he still feels, that on the whole this code of conduct has served him well. But even two years ago, when he had finally felt he would get nowhere with the Marshal, the apocalypse had started to feel protracted, and Hermann was rapidly losing patience.

And that was how he had started what he privately considers his passion project. Although Hermann no longer works closely with the J-Tech division, he has kept an eye on the department and on any techs that seem promising. One tech in particular, a young and slightly nervous man named Steven Silver, had struck Hermann as having the same anti-authoritarian streak he was so used to seeing in Newton. Social pleasantries never having been his strong suit, Hermann had approached Steven with a mix of warmth, technobabble, and veiled threats, and had somehow (miraculously) completed the interaction with Steven’s agreement to covertly assist him in building his own remotely piloted Jaeger. 

For two years he has spent his dwindling spare time and savings building and programming a small, atypical Jaeger – if one could call it a Jaeger, he isn’t sure it still fits the definition, but that doesn’t matter – a Jaeger that will do what he needs it to do, what he hopes will finally convince the Marshal of the validity of his idea. He builds it because it is the only chance he has left of ever piloting a Jaeger; because he is relatively confident that Newt will respond positively to the idea; and because the world is ending and he may as damn well.

\--

“So how exactly are you planning to use your black market Jaeger? Do you seriously think we can fight a Kaiju? How are you planning on determining our drift compatibility? Just how much are you overestimating my kickboxing knowledge right now? If you’re not gonna tell the Marshal about this then how do you ever expect us to deploy an entire Jaeger during a Kaiju attack? I mean those things are huge and not exactly stealthy, dude. And most importantly, why did you wait two entire years to tell me about this?” Newton is pacing the lab frenetically in the wake of Hermann’s explanation of the project, his voice bouncing brightly off the walls as Hermann tries to quiet him because this is secret illegal activity, Newton, this is not an acceptable time for yelling. 

“To answer your questions in order,” Hermann begins, a little tersely, “First, our Jaeger, such as it is, is unconventional. It is not designed to fight Kaiju, but to study them and to take tissue samples, as well as to study the architecture of the Breach” Newton’s face lights up at his words. “Your… kickboxing skills will not only be unneeded but, given the way that the rig is designed, will be entirely useless. Our Jaeger is comparatively small and can be deployed from a currently unused shipping bay at the base of the Shatterdome, so stealth will in all likelihood not be a concern. Although it is not a fully realized theory yet, I have created a working model that may be able to successfully predict the timing of future Kaiju attacks – a model which I intend to present to the Marshal very soon, provided the next prediction lines up. If my model is correct, we should be able to send the Jaeger underwater to the Breach in time to witness a Kaiju enter our universe. A Kaiju coming through the Breach will take some time – long enough for us to take readings and, hopefully, tissue samples. Because we will not be physically present in the Jaeger, we do not run the risk of being eaten or crushed –we merely run the risk of being fired, which, at this late stage in the game, would likely not be a wise move on the part of the Marshal, no matter how vehemently he may sometimes wish it were. And finally, I waited until the project was nearly complete before sharing it with you because –“ Hermann has a brief internal struggle between being honest and being needlessly argumentative, with honesty winning out, but only just. He continues, suppressing his desire to obfuscate feelings with conflict, “because I wanted it to be something of a surprise. For you. It has been a dear project of mine for quite some time, but I also hoped, hope, that you will find it useful for your research.”

Newton is staring at him, clearly still trying to process the idea of a Kaiju-investigating mini-Jaeger, or perhaps merely taken aback by Hermann’s uncharacteristic openness. 

“Okay,” Newton says slowly, “so this is amazing, this is the coolest thing ever, probably – although taking tissue samples from a live Kaiju does seem maybe cruel, no no don’t look at me like that okay yeah it’s fine they do want to eat us, forget that – but I don’t really get why you want to do this with me, unless this is some extremely convoluted and high-effort way of asking me out, which, I know you’re not great at social norms but I’m pretty confident this is unconventional, not saying it isn’t sweet, but you did miss my question about whether we’re drift compatible and how you’re planning on determining that, given that I assume hitting each other with sticks is not a method you’d consider viable for the two of us.”

Hermann hesitates. Drift compatibility is the one area where he feels uncertain, particularly for the two of them. Newton is correct – Hermann is not remotely convinced that the current system in place to test drift compatibility is the only way to do so, or even the best way. He wonders if the human mind might be too complex for a simple physical test to determine compatibility, especially when this particular Jaeger’s mission is non-combative. There is an elegance, he must admit, to the combination of physical and mental agility demonstrated by prospective pilots during testing, but the current model cannot account for physical disability, as he is only too aware. He and Newton will not be able to test their physical and mental compatibility and in the absence of another testing method, Hermann knows that an untested drift would be risky. He takes a breath, “I do not know if we are drift compatible, Newton, and I do not currently have any non-combative method to find out if we are. I realize this is a setback as well as a risk, but I was hoping that, given your facility with neurobiology and your connection to the early stages of drift technology, you might have some ideas that won’t get us killed.”

Newton frowns at the ceiling for a moment before asking, “How big is our Jaeger? Cause a smaller Jaeger means a smaller neural load, meaning the threshold for compatibility…” he trails off, and then, shifting his focus back to Hermann, asks, “this predictive model you have – how long does it say we’ve got before the next attack?”

“Three days,” Hermann says, and instantly regrets it as Newton turns to grab his jacket and laptop, skidding around the lab in his haste to start working. “Wait,” Hermann says quickly, stepping forward to grip Newton’s arm before he runs off, “there will be an attack in three days, and another one exactly two weeks later. I would strongly recommend you take your time, wait this attack out, and see if we’re ready in two weeks.”

Newt grins at him, and Hermann is not sure he likes that look. “I’ll be ready in three days, Hermann, I swear. We’re gonna do this. Fortune favours the brave, dude.”

\--

Newt’s ability to run on inspiration and adrenaline is unparalleled, as far as his empirical evidence of the world has so far shown him. He starts work in the tiny, cement-walled room in a rarely-used part of the Shatterdome where Hermann has installed the rig immediately, at roughly 19:00 hours on Tuesday evening, and by 23:00 hours on Friday night, his interface is complete, his coding strategy for jumpstarting neural compatibility between himself and Hermann is brilliant, badass, and probably low-risk in a won’t-fry-their-neural-circuits kind of way, and he’s even had time to take a few catnaps in that one corner of the room where the cement wall curves slightly in a way that’s almost inviting. Not only can Newt stay awake for dangerous lengths of time without suffering any particularly severe consequences, but he can also sleep anywhere, at any time, given even the mildest inclination. Hermann, for his part, has done due diligence to cover for Newt, explaining his absence from work with irritated retellings of fabricated third-hand accounts of some kind of adventure Newt supposedly had in downtown Hong Kong that resulted in a massive hangover and possibly a concussion. Newt hopes, but does not suspect, that Hermann has made the details lascivious enough that he sounds like a cool and sexy science Casanova and not someone who, say, deserves to be fired for his choices.

Newt spends most of his time in that room alternating between frantic typing and rigging and re-rigging and generally pulling an entirely new type of neural rig together from scratch, and marveling at Hermann having created this project in the first place. Newt is still struggling to fully integrate this new Hermann into his mental perception of his formerly-irritating, now still-irritating-but-inarguably-much-cooler colleague – a Hermann who breaks the rules, who keeps secrets, who builds literal secret black market Jaegers for the last two years with the help of, it sounds like, exactly one unusually helpful J-Tech, and then hides said Jaeger, which is actually maybe the only truly cool Jaeger ever built, which has a compartment specifically designed for holding tissue samples and which has two fun, retractable science arms and a truly astonishing array of sensors, he’s getting mentally off track here. The point is, you think you know a guy, and then he builds you a Jaeger so beautiful that you maybe cry about it a couple of times over the course of the three days that you’re working, maybe just a little. 

As soon as he knows he’s been successful, as the final light blinks into life on the rig, he punches the air, silently congratulates himself on being truly, genuinely, the greatest living scientist, fires off a text to Silver Steven to let him know it’s go time, and runs out the door and up to the mess hall, snagging a muffin before looping back and practically skipping down the long, corrugated hallway to Hermann’s quarters. He’s going to observe a whole, alive Kaiju from a standing-room-only vantage point, a front row floor ticket to the exobiology equivalent of Queen, and he’s just in time to bother his colleague – his soon-to-be drift partner (provided the rig works, it will work, it will probably work) – and drag him out of bed and into what promises to be by far the coolest night of his life, of both their lives, as long as neither of them dies and as long as they hopefully also get their beautiful miraculous baby Jaeger back in one piece and full of the best, just the best Kaiju DNA a guy could ask for. If this works he’s buying Hermann flowers.

\--

Newt raps out a complicated tattoo against Hermann’s door, last of the muffin in his mouth. He tries, he really does try to contain his impatience. He finished work on time but really only just – according to Hermann’s predictions, the breach should open at 01:00, giving them an hour to suit up and twenty minutes to pilot their baby, their shiny silver baby that Newt loves so much, out into open ocean, twenty minutes to take readings on the breach before it rumbles open into a trans-dimensional horror show and the real fun begins, and an extra seventeen minutes for good measure in case something goes wrong, or maybe just seventeen extra minutes to fill with bickering, Newt isn’t sure. At any rate, he needs Hermann awake and he needs him now. Newt is about to start drumming more aggressively on the door when it opens abruptly to reveal a sleep-ruffled but bright-eyed Hermann. 

“Oh good! You’re awake. Thought I’d have to pilot Baby Driver alone for a minute there. Come on, it’s Kaiju time!” Newt grabs at Hermann’s non-cane-holding hand but, because he’s incredibly classy and considerate of his colleague, he lets Hermann step into the hall and shut the door to his quarters before kicking it into high gear and half dragging Hermann down the hallways to their wonderful secret drift lab. Hermann hurries along with him in silence until they round the first corner, when he tugs abruptly on Newt’s hand: 

“Newton,” he says, withering tone and mild breathlessness fighting with the obvious dread in his voice, “you may not name our Jaeger Baby Driver.”

“Unfortunately for you, my dude, I’ve spent a lot of time with Baby over the last three days, and seeing as you had two years to give her a name and you clearly never did, I took it upon myself. And before you decide this is for some reason unacceptable to you –“

“It is.”

“– you should know that I did already get your Silver Steven to weld an official name plate onto her, and I also programmed her name into the command system. She is small, she is our baby, and we are going to drive her under the ocean in T minus 55 minutes. And you know, I feel very strongly that this establishment has really failed to adequately celebrate Edgar Wright’s work, which seems to me like a totally unacceptable oversight for an apocalypse prevention team to have, so like so many goddamn things around here, I made it my problem and then I fixed it.”

“In your professional opinion, Newton, exactly what is the correct amount of adulation due to Edgar Wright’s filmography by a military base?”

\--

The rig is unorthodox by Jaeger standards, to say the least. Rather than full-body motor control, they are harnessed only from the waist up, partly to accommodate Hermann’s hip and partly because the Jaeger – Hermann refuses to refer to it by the name Newton has chosen – only has two navigable appendages. Those appendages retract, turning the Jaeger into a near-perfect silver sphere that will jet along the bottom of the ocean until it reaches the Breach and Newton and Hermann can start their work. Their arm movements will be in synch as they maneuver Baby’s – the Jaeger’s – arms and collect samples for Newton while Hermann’s sensors and cameras record as much data as possible on the Breach. Hermann realizes abruptly that this is it; this is his chance to do what he tried so hard to do at the Academy. Newton’s obvious excitement is contagious, and a reminder of what this means for both of them. 

But on the other hand, the rational part of Hermann’s brain reminds him that he is both tired and stressed, and he wonders reluctantly if it might not be better to wait until the next attack. Going into a drift, especially with a new partner, should be done in a calmer state of mind than the one he is currently in. He entertains this possibility, he really does, and then he rejects it. Waiting another two weeks for this opportunity would be excruciating, and Newton’s interface is right in front of them, up and running and theoretically ready to initiate a drift. They will either be compatible under Newton’s drift system, or else Hermann will have wasted two years of his life building an illegal Jaeger for nothing. Hermann is not quite sure he can handle the disappointment if he waits another two weeks only to fail, so he decides that they may as well find out now which way the chips are going to fall. 

As they strap into the rig and Newton fiddles with last-minute interface checks, Hermann casts his mind back to the Academy and the basics of drift psychology. He realizes belatedly how unprepared they are – he has not had the opportunity to speak to his partner in detail about what is actually about to happen. “Listen,” he begins, “you know that drifting is complicated. In order to enter the drift with minimal trauma, particularly for a first time drift, we are both going to need to relax in a way that will not be intuitive for either of us.”

“Pfft, I’m super relaxed,” Newton says. Hermann reaches out and gently places his fingers on Newton’s hand, which is shaking lightly against the control panel. Newton glances down at his hand, frowns, and makes a visible effort to calm down.

“I’m not stressed, man, I’m just excited to see a Kaiju, don’t worry about it.”

“I have a reasonable degree of concern about everything we are doing, but in essence, you have to relax not just your body, but your mind. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable.”

Newton looks at him askance, but says nothing. Hermann continues, “In the drift, you must listen to me, and I must listen to you. We cannot bicker, or we will lose the drift and that means losing the Jaeger. The same thing will happen if either of us panics.”

“I’m not gonna panic, Hermann, what are you talking about?” Newton snaps. Hermann almost snaps back at him, but there isn’t time, so he manages to stay silent until he has collected his thoughts and pulled himself into an approximation of the appropriate mental state for drifting.

“If you feel you’re ready, then we can begin.” He wants to say, I hope you realize what you’re getting yourself into. I hope you are prepared for an onslaught of memories that are not your own, and I hope I am too. I hope you know that there will be no coming back from this, not really, not for the rest of our lives.

He says nothing, and Newton hits the button.

\--

Newt’s first impressions of the drift are impossible to parse, a sensory overload of colour and emotion as Hermann’s memories, all parts of his neural landscape, flood Newt’s brain. The flashes of memory he encounters feel familiar, but logically he knows they are not his own, and most of them fly by too fast for him to see clearly. Newt picks out with brief but sharp clarity a few images – or at least, there are a few that stick, but he has his doubts about whether he has any say in which ones those might be. First is, strangely, Hermann’s most recent haircut – Newt, or rather Hermann, is in the barber’s chair, staring sternly into the mirror at Hermann’s face as some insufferable pop song that Newt actually quite likes plays in the background. Next he is at a party during Hermann’s time at TU Berlin, standing near the door and feeling the thumping bass of electronic music in his chest, beer in hand, trying and failing to push back a formless panic – and the panic feels incredibly real even through the drift, Newt thinks. And then Newt is in one of Hermann’s early childhood memories. He is sitting at a heavy wooden table, the texture of which Newt can feel distinctly under Hermann’s fingertips. His family – no, Hermann’s family – is seated around him and his mother is carrying in a tray of cupcakes from the kitchen, each with a single candle burning in it – a birthday party? Hermann’s mother is singing, and outside the house Newt hears the distant crack of fireworks. There is something odd about all of the memories, as though they are limned by some strange quality of light, some echo or veneer that Newt can’t quite place.

And then, abruptly, he comes back to himself just a little, remembers that he is in the lab even though the neural link has hijacked his vision, so that what he actually sees is what Baby Driver can see, hiding at the bottom of the ocean beneath the Shatterdome. But despite the relative calm now that the drift has settled, Newt can feel quite keenly the link between his mind and Hermann’s. It is as though something is pulling gently but insistently in his chest. The two of them are together under the ocean, sharing Baby’s sight, and Newt can feel Hermann’s nostalgia for the Academy and the bittersweetness of being here, about to operate a Jaeger, after all these years. He can feel how acutely Hermann longs for the life he might have had as though the longing belonged to him, as though Newt is the one living in a permanent state of unacknowledged desire.

The two of them are cautious for a moment as they adjust, flex their arms experimentally and in perfect synchronicity, and then, with a mental maneuver that feels easier and smoother than Newt would have expected, they set Baby Driver in motion, rolling her across the ocean floor and using her underwater thrusters to glide over obstacles. Newt feels himself existing in triplicate and tries not to lose his balance between sitting in the lab, rocketing through the ocean, and existing in the amorphous space of the drift with Hermann. He can feel Hermann’s movements, he realizes, as little electric signals in his own nervous system. It’s a strange kind of connectivity that Newt has never felt before, an understanding of exactly where Hermann is and what his intentions are. Newt doesn’t know if this kind of connection could exist outside of the drift, but he abruptly and strongly suspects that if it does, it must only exist between lovers – the gentle and almost subconscious understanding of where another person is, intuiting their desires from the smallest shifts and touches. He can sense Hermann’s intensely focused mood – not his thoughts exactly, unless Hermann deliberately sends an impulse to move or a careful wave of serenity that is obviously intended to calm Newt’s nerves – but something just under that; the way he would understand Hermann if…

The way he would know, even in sleep, when a partner turned over, or how to reach out a hand and grasp Hermann’s every time, without looking. The comparison makes him vaguely uncomfortable. The edges of the pair of them have blurred in a way that Newt finds achingly vulnerable, and he isn’t quite sure if that’s normal. Do all drift partners feel this way? He wonders how they could possibly fight if they’re feeling something so fragile. The pilots he sees in the Shatterdome seem too stoic to be experiencing this kind of emotional upheaval with such alarming regularity. Is this unusual? Does it get easier over time? Or is it always like this?

Hermann, for his part, takes from the drift something that he feels is very strange, and which he does not remember being warned about at the Academy. Moments after they initiate the drift he can feel, he is sure he can feel, Newton’s heartbeat alongside his own, pounding out of time in syncopated circulation. It’s an uncomfortable sensation, similar to the heart palpitations he sometimes feels under duress, but more clearly defined. He can feel quite viscerally when Newton’s adrenaline spikes as the Jaeger coasts over oceanic trenches; he can feel the eagerness and tension in Newton’s forearms, his nervous and excited tremor at what they’re doing. He absorbs Newton’s nervousness, feels himself pull it gently into a space in his chest, as though he is inhaling, and through the drift he almost unconsciously sends a sense of steadiness into Newton’s mind that calms the subtle shaking of his hands. Hermann thinks of quantum mechanics, of the impossibility of separating entangled particles and the curious attributes they are destined to share, no matter how far apart they are pulled. 

Hermann and Newton stay silent, although they are communicating more fluidly than Hermann ever has before, or suspects he ever will again. Hermann settles into the feeling of duplicated mind and body as he and his drift partner hurtle through the ocean, as they sit still in their secret lab, as they test each other’s mental waters and learn how to maneuver Baby Driver for the delicate job ahead.

\--

The Breach looks like an ordinary oceanic trench, except, of course, for the crackling blue lightning around its edges that Newton and Hermann can see from quite some distance. Hermann is already matching what he’s seeing to his prior understanding of the Breach, but he can feel how much the… well, trans-dimensional portal, for lack of a better phrase, he can feel how much it unsettles Newton. Its very existence feels slightly wrong. They have arrived slightly later than Hermann had hoped – there is clearly already some seismic activity going on and Newton and Hermann hurry to set up all of Hermann’s sensors and Newton’s high-definition underwater cameras to record as much information as possible. Specialty equipment, carefully stolen by Steven Silver, flickers to life just as the ocean floor beneath Baby shakes, and then again, three times in all. The tremors are violent and Newton and Hermann back Baby up quickly just as – it’s Hermann’s turn to be unsettled – a huge, jointed appendage emerges spider-like from the widening Breach. The two of them jerk backwards, battling twinned fight-or-flight responses. Echoes of anxiety bounce between them as more legs emerge, laboriously dragging a giant head from under the world. They wait for a protracted moment as the Kaiju struggles, and Hermann abruptly and uncomfortably feels as though he is witnessing a birth, rather than a transit from one universe to the next. He is put in mind of Yeats, which Newton hears through the drift. Though they are silent, Hermann senses that Newton is not partial to his choice of poetry in their current situation.

The thing in the breach pauses as though catching its breath, and after a moment Newton’s excitement bubbles back to the surface and he and Hermann jerk Baby Driver abruptly forward. His excitement is infectious, and Hermann can feel their hearts race in tandem as they approach. They whirl Baby in a wide circle around – “Ozymandias,” Newton sends the name clearly through the drift, almost reverent, and Hermann grits his teeth, what a juvenile choice, really Newton. He buries his irritation as something the two of them can argue about later, and turns his focus back to the thing emerging before them. It really is hideous, he thinks, though he can feel Newton’s violent disagreement. It looks like an enormous lobster that has the misfortune of being mid-molt, exoskeleton giving way to a horrible fleshy protrusion at what Newton is apparently considering to be the back of its neck. Whatever calm vibes Hermann had succeeded in imparting earlier in the drift have left them both, and instead Hermann feels slightly more than slightly nauseated. He is grateful that his sensors will take their measurements with minimal input on his part, but Newton has no such system in place for tissue extraction.

Together, with Hermann trying valiantly to sublimate his nausea into a shared nervous anticipation, they roll Baby forward until her arms are within reach of the place where the flesh meets the exoskeleton, just above one of Ozymandias’s many (too many) legs. Hermann tries to control his breathing and remember that they are not actually underwater, that they are relatively safe in their secret lab. Together, they ready Baby Driver’s arms to collect a monster’s tissue sample. They take one deep breath, push a cruel-looking instrument up against Ozymandias, and then Newton, through a pang of guilt at having to cause relatively minor pain to a creature that actively wants to eat him, hits the button. 

The instrument punches a lump of flesh out of the Kaiju’s neck and pulls it free into a rapidly sealing metal tube. Ozymandias did not appear to have noticed Baby Driver prior to the punch, but she (she? How can Newton tell?) certainly notices the Jaeger now. She screams – one of the most viscerally recognizable sensory experiences of the apocalypse, transmitted into the neural rig in full surround sound – and Hermann sees the familiar jagged burgundy spikes briefly cross his vision. Newton starts violently, trying to drag a hand up in front of his face and nearly dropping the tube in the process as Hermann wrestles with him over their currently shared motor control. Hermann can feel Newton’s fear (extremely understandable) and a good deal of confusion (which Hermann cannot place) as Newton fumbles, trying to slot the tube into Baby’s sample compartment before Ozymandias turns her huge, bulging head and decides that a small Jaeger that can cause a sharp spike of pain is a problem that needs to be eaten. And she certainly is turning her head. Hermann is operating on pure instinct, forcing himself to relax enough to coordinate his movements with Newton’s, both of them struggling to sink into the smooth synchronicity they had so recently shared before this otherwise promising mission reaches a point of no return and, and –

They almost don’t make it.

But less than a minute later as they are once again hurtling through the dimly lit underwater blueness, samples and data recordings miraculously intact, Hermann feels their simultaneous adrenaline rushes surge through the drift. Emotionally, what he can feel from Newton is a jittery excitement coupled with slightly hysterical relief. Whatever strange, blind confusion had gripped Newton for a moment after Ozymandias’s scream seems long forgotten. Hermann can feel the words that under different circumstances Newton would be saying – “I-can’t-believe-we-did-this, we’re-fucking-rockstars-man, Ozzy-wasn’t-all-that-big-I-think-probably-only-cat-2-maybe-3-what-do-you-think” – but the drift seems to preclude words and Hermann simply absorbs the buzz of Newton’s post-Kaiju mindset with begrudgingly charmed interest.

Newt, mentally piloting Baby Driver through the aftermath of possibly the greatest adventure of his life, thinks that the dynamic between him and Hermann in the drift is no longer that soft and fledgling feeling that had so strongly moved and unsettled him earlier. The link between their minds feels sharper and sturdier now, more clearly defined. As they ride their Jaeger back to the Shatterdome their synchronicity is not effortless, but seems to course between them like something alive. He has the sensation that Hermann is spinning him on a dance floor and that he has to trust that when he finishes turning, gravity and skill and timing will pull together perfectly so that he can allow himself to be caught every time. It is a mental expression of the physical confidence and complete trust that Newt imagines that athletes, and not scientists, are more wont to feel. Amid the clamour of emotion echoing between them, Newt feels an abrupt and overwhelming gratitude to Hermann for making this stupidly risky, unbelievably cool pipe dream a real, actual reality. He feels the quiet understanding that Hermann sends him, pressing against his heart.

\--

Coming out of the drift is abrupt, disconcerting, and unpleasant, as though Newt has just been dropped onto some unforgiving surface. He is put in mind of the trampoline his uncle bought him as a college acceptance gift – he remembers the way being back on solid ground after flying through the air had made him feel stuck, vaguely frustrated, uncomfortably pinned by the limitations imposed on him by gravity. Gravity as such is not real, something Gottliebian says in his brain, it is only an expression of inertia. Newt encounters the traces of Hermann’s consciousness with a surprisingly strong nostalgia. He keeps mentally grasping for a connection that is no longer there, feeling somewhat disappointed to again be inhabiting only one mind and not sort-of two. He glances at Hermann in the chair next to him. He is sitting quietly, eyes closed, and probably trying to get his dizziness in check, if his experience is anything like Newt’s.

But Newt’s disappointment is short-lived: a few silent minutes later, the lab door opens and Steven walks in, grinning and pulling a trolley that contains Newt’s sealed tube of Ozzy-DNA. Newt is surprised by how quickly Steven managed to get here – he must have worked fast to get the sample up to Newt so he could get it onto ice as soon as possible. The two of them lift the tube off the trolley, Newt still a little unsteady on his feet and Steven obviously bursting with questions. Newt feels a sudden and intense respect for this kid who just really gets him, just really gets how much this science means to him, who must do, to be helping out with Baby Driver’s secret mission so much. It’s the middle of the night and by now the other Jaegers, the real, legal, fighting Jaegers, must be mid-deployment to go out and destroy Ozymandias. He feels a sharp spike of grief that he’s glad Hermann can’t sense at the loss of such a beautiful and (literally) otherworldly creature. He looks down at the tube and silently promises Ozzy that he’ll do his best to make his science worth something, even if he and Ozzy do have pretty antithetical goals, all things considered.

“So,” says Steven carefully, pulling him out of his sad Kaiju philosophizing, “I haven’t had a chance to look at the digital data yet, but it’s in the process of transferring to both of your personal computers right now. I mean this is amazing, you guys, this is unprecedented. I mean, what did it look like? You guys were there and back so quick – how did you collect so much tissue so fast? I thought you’d have to be drilling through an exoskeleton. Do you know what category it was? Pentecost didn’t sound all that worried when the initial warning came through, which was weird, so I’m guessing it wasn’t too big? And what was drifting like? I’ve always been curious about that. Your rig worked I guess, Dr. Geiszler, I mean you didn’t fry your brains anyway. Baby looks great, can’t see any damage. Once we clean her up she’ll be ready to head out at the next sign of Breach activity, no doubt. When are you gonna start working on this? I’m not a biologist but I’d love to watch you work, I know you guys are short-staffed – sorry I’m not trained for this, I know, it just seems sort of hopeful, you know? Like you guys are really doing something, really making progress –“

Steven keeps talking, but Newt is finding it hard to focus. He doesn’t want to describe the last hour to Steven, including the drift. Especially the drift, and the vibrancy of the emotions he felt inside it. As Steven talks, Newt wonders distantly if something is wrong with his eyes, because he swears he keeps seeing a cluster of green dots in the bottom left corner of his vision. Is this the start of a migraine? He hopes not. He shuts his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again he realizes how tired he is. He’s been awake for most of the last three days and drifting, it turns out, is a metabolically expensive activity. Peripherally, he sees Hermann pick up his cane and stand stiffly. 

“Newton,” Hermann says, interrupting Steven’s ongoing string of questions. Steven turns to look at Hermann as though surprised to see him before mumbling apologetic excuses and making for the door. “Congratulations,” Hermann continues as Steven leaves, “on an eminently successful mission, but if you will excuse me, I am going to get a few more hours’ sleep before the debriefing that will shortly occur where we will, in all likelihood, need to explain our actions to the Marshal.” 

Newt nods and for a moment they don’t move. Newt wonders if he should say something about the drift, about what they just experienced together. But there is too much to unpack and he is tired, so the moment passes and the two of them collect their things and head back to their quarters. Newt briefly considers listening to music as he falls asleep, which ordinarily would calm him down after running on adrenaline for so long, but before he can even cue up the first song, some unfamiliar impulse that he suspects comes from Hermann makes him put his phone down, take off his already too-loose tie, and lie down. He is asleep almost instantly.

\--

Newt wakes abruptly from the deepest sleep he can remember to someone banging on his door. Correction: he wakes abruptly to Hermann banging on his door, because nobody else could possibly convey long-suffering irritation so clearly in four evenly timed knocks. He shakes his head to clear an odd blue tinge from his vision and picks up his phone. 09:45, and the briefing is (as an official notification tells him) at 10:00. He scrubs his hands through his hair and wonders if he should be seriously concerned about his brain. He doesn’t have a headache, he doesn’t think, but visual-only migraines are not something he’s ever experienced. He runs through the possible neurological consequences of drifting on a remote interface rig as he pulls on a somewhat cleaner (though still not ironed) shirt and stumbles to the door, unable to think of anything that would cause migraine-like visual impairment with no other symptoms. 

He opens the door to find Hermann, very awake, very showered, wearing clean clothes, and regarding him with a sort of hopeless amusement. He is about to ask Hermann if he is experiencing any post-drift side-effects when Hermann gives him a rare smile and a cup of coffee, and Newt is too taken aback by this unusual display of normal human social interaction to ask about possible brain damage. 

“Shall we?” Hermann asks, and Newt sees the worry in his eyes.

They are both apprehensive as they head to the briefing. The Marshal does not yet know about Baby Driver or the expedition, and they agree to wait until they know that taking down Ozymandias has gone smoothly before dropping the “oh and by the way, we built an illegal Jaeger and remote-drifted to collect data” bomb. When they arrive, Newt and Hermann sit quietly in the back corner of the small conference room, unease flowing between them so clearly that Newt again misses the synchronicity of the drift. They sit as the Marshal goes through the motions of a post-attack debrief, settling into the familiar combination of hopeless exhaustion and victory that each successive Kaiju brings. Newt was right – Ozzy was a Cat 2, and Sasha and Aleksis had relatively little trouble taking her down. Aleksis mentions the Kaiju’s unusual shape, asking whether it’s possible for a Kaiju to be mutated, and suddenly all eyes are on Newt.

Newton has looked uncomfortable all morning – not that Hermann can blame him – and he looks even more so now, standing up at the back of the room to address the assembled Shatterdome personnel and answer questions about the biology of a particular Kaiju from what is supposed to be a purely theoretical standpoint. Hermann is concerned about him; about the way he keeps rubbing his eyes and about what looked like a slight limp as they walked here. Hermann is slightly concerned about himself, too, as he has had songs that he has never actually heard stuck in his head all morning, and last night he dreamed he was being tattooed and he could swear he felt the needle punching ink into his skin. He knows that the drift has consequences, of course, but it is different to experience the blending of identity in real time than it is to accept in the abstract. His brain helpfully provides him with a lyric: "if you live long enough theory and practice intersect," from a song that he did not write but which he feels fairly confident he could pick out on guitar if pressed. 

“… So we don’t really know,” Newt is saying, “whether category systems are examples of different stages of Kaiju development, or if, say, a Cat 2 Kaiju is already fully grown and what we’re seeing is just natural variation –“

“Especially,” Hermann interrupts, “since our studies of the Kaiju equivalents of telomere length and cellular senescence have indicated that their aging process does not have a strict timeline, contrary to most Earth-based, carbon-based biology. In fact, we don’t know if they age at all.” Hermann stops talking to find himself on his feet, leaning on his cane while gesticulating in a distinctly Newtonian manner, and being stared at by everyone in the room – particularly Newton, whose expression is an uncomfortable mixture of horror and vivid interest. 

The room is silent in the wake of the unmistakable evidence that Newton and Hermann have drifted. Everyone in the Shatterdome can recognize the uncanny doubling effect that pilots, especially new pilots, have. They both remain standing. Hermann takes a deep breath and begins one of the most unorthodox presentations of his career.

“Marshal, I understand that there is some confusion at present about recent actions taken by myself and Dr. Geiszler. Please allow me to explain the unusual circumstances surrounding our behaviour this morning, particularly in light of last night’s breach activity.”

“Dr. Gottlieb and I have created a revolutionary piece of technology that has extensive practical implications for how we could learn more about both the breach and Kaiju biology. We have created a small, well, Jaeger of sorts, specifically for research purposes as opposed to defense.”

“The Jaeger is run by a two-pilot remote drift interface, programmed by Dr. Geiszler. We had considered the logistical and political implications of algorithm-dependent drone interfaces, but decided that despite the risks inherent in running untested drift technology, remote drifting was the superior choice. We realize that these actions are in extreme violation of PPDC policy, but – ”

“But the data we gathered was extraordinary. We haven’t had time to examine it all yet, but for starters we know that remote interface drifting works, and we managed to collect both raw data on the nature of the breach – ”

“– As well as a large sample of soft tissue from a living Kaiju with far less human risk than standard defense-oriented drifting. We consider –”

“– Our actions to be justified, despite the fact that they were –”

“– Not officially sanctioned, and we –“

“– Fully expect our data to give us unprecedented insight –”

“– Into potential ways of closing the breach altogether.”

The end of their last sentence is spoken in unison and they watch the Marshal with matched expressions of hope and dread.

\--

“Dude, I can’t believe we didn’t get fired, I did not expect that to go so well. Did you expect that to go so well? We did it, man! We actually did it! We’re gonna be like, Shatterdome celebrities for this. We should throw a party, you know? Officially christen Baby Driver, get smashed, regale our esteemed colleagues with our incredibly brave non-Kaiju-killing adventure.”

“We are in no position to be quite so celebratory about our situation, Newton. The Marshal gave us forty-eight hours to extract some kind of meaning from our data to prove that our experiment was not a complete waste of time, as you well know. Were it not for the fact that you and I currently comprise the entirety of the K-Science department, I am certain we would have been fired the moment the Marshal realized that we had drifted.”

“You mean the moment that you interrupted me to show off your newfound exobiology knowledge to everyone we work with. That moment.”

Hermann grits his teeth, embarrassed at having been unable to hide the painfully obvious evidence of their drift. They arrive back at their regular, non-secret lab for their two days of enforced research time, Newton dragging his iced tube of Kaiju on a trolley through the hydraulic doors and back into the space they have reluctantly shared for nearly a decade. Hermann has a brief but disconcerting moment where he begins to walk towards Newton’s desk, Newton’s side of the lab, before switching course mid-step. He hopes that Newton did not notice, but when he glances across the room he sees a similarly sheepish look on Newton’s face as he, too, switches directions. He wonders how long this will last, and whether he will ever be fully himself again.

Newt snaps on a pair of gloves and starts setting up a sterile field. He’s just cut the first small chunk of Ozzy-tissue away from the rest of the sample, scalpel in hand, when he decides that actually, their victory, and their continued employment against all odds, merits some mid-morning lab tunes. Hermann has a strict rule against playing music in the lab that Newt has never really understood, but today is a special occasion. And if he plays something Hermann likes – since he’s now privy to that extremely niche information – then maybe Hermann will let it slide. Pulling off one glove, he searches for the song he has in mind. Pythagoras’s Trousers by the Penguin Café Orchestra – it’s a weird little instrumental ditty but it will do for a first song. If it goes over well he’s switching to Heretic Pride. 

He starts the song and is trying to put his glove back onto his right hand while still holding the scalpel when the opening notes start. And suddenly, waves of green and bright orange triangles flood his vision, dancing and morphing and the colours are so vivid that he jumps a little and the scalpel –

“Hermann? Oh, fuck um Hermann help there’s – can you get the first aid kit or something I’m –“ Hermann spins around at his desk to see Newton drop his scalpel to the floor, clutching his right hand. He grabs his cane and hurries over, blinking at the familiar pink orbs billowing across his vision.

“Newton, here –” he takes Newton’s hand – there isn’t actually all that much blood. Good. Newton isn’t dying, and he hasn’t even cut his dominant hand. But Hermann cannot help him with this song distracting him. He snatches Newton’s phone from the side of the table and shuts the music off before turning back. Newton is not even looking at his injured hand; instead, he is staring into the middle distance, confused and startled, as blood drips steadily onto the floor.

“Sit down,” Hermann orders, pulling a clean handkerchief from his blazer and pressing it firmly against Newton’s palm. Newton sits and seems to finally focus on Hermann. “Dude,” he says, “what was that?”

“You slipped, I would imagine, while you were breaking the rule about music in the lab. I’ll leave it to you to assess the severity of your injury.”

“What? No, man, I know I cut my hand. I mean – I think something’s wrong with me, Hermann. I keep seeing – I mean, I thought it was just a migraine, but when that song came on I saw, like, these colourful waves, and then shapes, big orange triangles. I guess I’m hallucinating? I haven’t heard of abstract visual hallucinations being a product of drifting, but maybe, maybe something got fucked up with the remote interface, I don’t know. Has this – has anything weird been happening to you?” Newton looks up at him pleadingly, obviously unnerved. Hermann is taken aback. He had not expected this particular side effect of drifting. It had never occurred to him, but perhaps it should have done. But Newton looks afraid, and if Hermann cannot make his hand stop bleeding at least he can stop that fear.

“Newton,” he begins, pulling up another chair and sitting down, “I don’t believe that you’re hallucinating. Is there anything unusual about your vision now?”

“Um, maybe a little? There’s like, sort of faint red lines, horizontal lines, when you talk? But it’s not as bad, like I only see them if I pay attention.”

Hermann nods. “You’re not hallucinating, Newton. This must be a side effect of drifting; I believe you’re quite correct. But I think you’ve inherited my synaesthesia through the drift. I didn’t realize this would happen, but it’s understandable given that we shared neural pathways. I would have warned you, had it occurred to me. I suppose it may be something of an adjustment for you.”

Newton stares at him for several moments, incredulous. “I’ve known you since 2013 and you never told me you have synaesthesia? You never told the resident neuroscientist in your life about your extremely cool and rare perceptual quirk where you can see sounds as colour? Is this why you don’t like music in the lab, because the colours distract you? Are you kidding me? Why has this never come up?”

It’s Hermann’s turn to be taken aback. “It… isn’t something I think about often. I never realized it would interest you. Synaesthesia is background noise in my life – it is woven into how I have always seen the world, but I’ve never found it particularly significant. As divergent forms of perception go, it is relatively unobtrusive. I am curious, though, that you mentioned seeing orange triangles while listening to Pythagoras’s Trousers. I have never associated either orange or triangles with that song. Could you tell me, as far as you are concerned, what colour is the letter A?”

“Green,” says Newton immediately.

“So you’ve inherited my synaesthesia, but it manifests differently for you – I suppose that makes sense. Sharing neural maps does not necessarily mean sharing identical consequences of crossed wires, as it were. A, for me, has always been red, which, incidentally, is statistically likely among synaesthetes, though I suspect this trend is ultimately meaningless and largely due to small sample size.”

“Look,” Newton says, “this is… I mean this is wild and from a neuroscience perspective, kinda fascinating. But I gotta say, I’m not super pleased about having my vision and my, my whole perception of the world hijacked for possibly the rest of my life. I don’t want to see orange triangles, and I don’t know how I feel about the fact that A is green now and also she’s a girl. I gender letters now? And… yup, thinking about it, I gender numbers too. God this is kind of cool but I’m also pissed, okay? You should have told me, man. You can’t spring funky clusters of crossed wires onto another person’s brain without warning. I just… anyway I’m going to the med bay.”

“I don’t believe your hand requires stitches,” Hermann says.

“It doesn’t, I just want like fifteen minutes where if you’re in my head at least you’re not also in my physical space. We can talk about this weird shit later, okay? Bye.”

\--

Half an hour later, Newt is sitting in his room, hand freshly bandaged, thinking about how he should get back to work after he unceremoniously abandoned Hermann in the lab. He’d felt angry and off-kilter when he’d left, suddenly assaulted by a whole new perceptual system that he did not choose and isn’t sure he wants to have. But now that he’s alone, he thinks about Hermann seeing the world in such vivid colour without Newt ever knowing; thinks about how much insight he has suddenly gained into Hermann’s unusual mind. He abruptly feels a strange sort of fondness for his newly inherited idiosyncrasies, snaps his fingers on his uninjured hand and watches the vivid yellow sparks that briefly flicker into view. 

If this change is permanent, he thinks, then he will carry this small part of Hermann with him for the rest of his life – however long that may turn out to be – along with the more subtle effects of the drift. He wishes, a little, that his colours were the same as Hermann’s, but dismisses that thought as needlessly sentimental, even for him. He wonders if Hermann is as emotional about sharing his synaesthesia with Newt as Newt suddenly feels about receiving it. Somehow he doubts it, given that Hermann didn’t think it was even worth mentioning. He probably finds it intellectually but not emotionally significant, and that should come as no surprise. Still, Newt’s initial anger has dissipated, to be replaced by something else, some gentle protectiveness over Hermann and his irritating, beautiful, secret way of seeing the world. Determined to get some data out of Ozzy’s cells and to learn to navigate a world where listening to music is both beautifully immersive and unfortunately probably impossible to do while working, he heads back to Hermann.

\--

The next morning, Hermann walks into the lab to find Newton staring up at his chalkboards, arms crossed. The two of them had spent the previous afternoon in somewhat uncomfortable silence as Newton began sequencing Ozymandias’s DNA, tried to get used to the sound-activated bursts of semi-transparent colour that clouded his vision, and glanced regularly at Hermann, troubled. He doesn’t look particularly troubled now, Hermann notes, as Newton turns to him.

“Your blackboards are beautiful,” Newt says excitedly, looking back to the walls of numbers. “I never knew before but they’ve always been colourful, haven’t they? Three, one, four – red, white, pink. Rainbow calculus, huh.”

“Blue, brown, and green for me,” Hermann replies, feeling strangely exposed. “It can be… helpful for memorization, and for seeing mistakes and inconsistencies in patterns.” For a few moments, the two of them gaze up at the rows of numbers and symbols, not exactly seeing an overlay of colour as they would upon hearing sounds, but sensing the colour of each number distinctly in their minds. For a moment, Hermann acutely wishes he could see Newton’s colours as well as his own, see what his work looks like through synaesthesia that is both his own and not his own. He still misses the drift, if he’s honest with himself. He misses sharing Newton’s brain instead of just the echoes of it. 

“You know,” Newton says, “I was listening to some Queen this morning and Freddie Mercury’s voice is this beautiful purple-blue. It was trippy but it was… sort of cool. I think, maybe, I could get used to this.” Hermann looks over at Newton, touched. 

“I… I am glad you feel that way. I am truly sorry to have altered your perception of the world without due warning. I suppose, in a way, this is just a natural extension of what drifting always does to people.” Newton frowns, and Hermann pushes ahead despite how disturbingly personal it feels to continue. 

“And Newton,” he says, “your voice, coincidentally, is a similar shade of blue to what you described. When you speak, it looks a little like rain.”

\--

Four days later, after handing in their preliminary data and – fortunately – not being fired, things have sort of gone back to normal. Well, except that Newt can’t stop dreaming of the drift and also a hundred times a day colours flood his vision and make him think of Hermann. Normal other than the tug Newt feels behind his ribs, but maybe that’s always been normal and he just never let himself think about it before. It doesn’t particularly matter that Hermann’s mannerisms have taken on a Newtonian quality that Newt finds excessively charming. The world is still ending and he shouldn’t bother thinking about the synchronicity with which they both leave their desks to make tea every day. He thinks about it anyway as he sits in the lab one evening, listening to music and sketching. He hears Hermann come in, and over the colours of the music he sees the now-familiar whirls of robin’s egg blue as Hermann’s cane clicks against the concrete floor. 

Hermann sets the cup of tea Newt hadn’t known he wanted in front of him and sits, reaching over to pick up his book from the small stack he’s taken to keeping on Newt’s desk. Newt turns the music down but not off. This evening harmony is a development of the last few days, and not one they have talked about. 

After a few minutes of silence that ought to be comfortable if only Newt didn’t have quite so many feelings rattling around inside him at once, Hermann peers at Newt’s notebook with obvious interest. “Is that –” he begins, almost smiling.

“A song? Yeah it’s what Invincible by Ok Go looks like. Don’t laugh but I – it’s sort of a tattoo idea?” Newt wonders if Hermann can hear the melody, if he picked it up in the drift. 

“It looks… chaotic,” Herman says.

“Yeah, well I mean, if I’m gonna tattoo what music looks like it may as well be a song with a lot going on, you know? And I know we have different colours but like, I assume the general shapes you see are similar, right? So like, if I got something like this tattooed it would remind… remind me of you.” Newt realizes as he’s saying it that it’s probably a bit much, that he might have crossed some sort of line, although since the drift he’s lost track of exactly where the lines are. 

Hermann, clearly taken aback, says, “The shapes I see are similar, yes,” and they lapse back into another silence as Newt’s music, still on low volume, tinges his vision lilac. As a means of pulling this interaction back from whatever ledge they’re approaching, Newt asks a question he’s been meaning to ask since the drift.

“Hey so one of the memories I saw of yours, one of the clearest ones, it was from when you were uh, pretty young, and you were sitting at a table with your family and your mum brought out cupcakes, you remember? I thought that was maybe your birthday at the time, but there were fireworks going off outside as if it was a bigger celebration – what was it? I mean you don’t have to tell me, maybe you don’t even remember, but I was just curious, it was kind of… I mean it was a really beautiful memory.”

“Oh,” says Hermann quietly, “not a birthday, no. I believe it was a small party on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were far from the border, of course, but Partenkirchen can get sentimental. Privately, though I now recognize the absurdity of it, as a child I always considered those celebrations to have some vague connection to me, given that I was born five months to the day before it fell. That may have been why it felt like a birthday party when you saw it in the drift.” 

“I don’t think we had any celebrations like that when I was little,” Newt says softly. “Our house was in Prenzlauer Berg, and the first few years of reunification were kind of chaotic, from what I hear. But I don’t really remember, and we left when I was so young, and anyway by the time I was born it had already fallen.”

Hermann looks at Newton, taking in the implications of his admission. Since the drift, he has had a better understanding of the tumultuous nature of Newton’s childhood, and though he has tried not to admit it, he feels a nascent sense of protectiveness for Newton. He imagines the strain on Newton’s parents when he was born, very much out of wedlock, into a world suddenly cracked wide open. His own childhood was by no means cheerful, but he had the stability Newton had always, always lacked.

“I could feel your heartbeat in the drift,” Hermann says without thinking.

“My heartbeat?”  
“Yes, alongside my own. It was an interesting sensation, though I must admit, somewhat unpleasant.”

“Oh,” Newton says, looking almost disappointed. “That’s not… I didn’t feel that. So you didn’t feel, uh… that sort of feeling of…” Newton waves his hand, searches for the right words, “the feeling of, almost like dancing? I could feel what you were going to do next, like I was sort of reaching out blindly but I could feel you there and I knew I could trust that you’d be exactly where I needed you to be?” Newton flushes slightly and taps his fingers to the centre of his chest absentmindedly, “I guess drifting isn’t the same for everyone but, man… I wish I could feel that kind of connection again. It was… well it wasn’t unpleasant. For me. But I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s possible to feel like that with another person, in a non-drift way. Not – I mean –“ Newton shakes his head, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Newton,” Hermann says carefully, putting down the book that he’s been holding this whole time and folding his hands in his lap, “I don’t know that I experienced what you’re describing while in the drift, exactly,” Newt opens his mouth to interrupt, but Hermann holds up a hand, “but I believe I know what you mean, and I think… I think that feeling is certainly possible outside of the neural handshake. Ever since the drift, and perhaps even for a while before it, I have felt something… like that… with you.” He takes a deep breath and combines his own willpower with inherited Newtonian recklessness to keep talking because if he doesn’t talk now then he doesn’t think he ever will. 

“Even when you go off on some tangent, even when we are entirely at odds, I know what it is you’re driving at. And I can tell, almost without fail, where you are in the lab and what you’re doing without turning to look. And when you speak, the colour of your voice shifts slightly with your mood. And I don’t know, truly, when all of that started, but it started before the drift. Maybe it started before we even met.”

Hermann doesn’t quite realize that he is tearing up until Newton leans across the desk between them and carefully, deliberately, swipes his thumb across Hermann’s cheek. His hand lingers, just for a moment, and Hermann reaches up to hold it before Newton can pull it back. Newton is looking at Hermann and something in his gaze has fallen into place. Hermann feels a sudden certainty, right down to his core, that the two of them are finally, finally, understanding each other, and he leans forward to close the gap between them.

Hermann feels Newton sink into the kiss, one hand cradling Hermann’s face as the other, still bandaged, comes up to tug uselessly at Hermann’s sweater even though they can’t get any closer with the desk still between them. Hermann threads one hand through Newton’s hair and rests the other against his neck. For the second time, Hermann realizes he can feel Newton’s heartbeat alongside his own, only this time he can feel it under his thumb in the pulse point below Newton’s jaw, and even, if he pays attention, in Newton’s lips. He smiles into the kiss and feels goosebumps rise on the back of Newton’s neck. 

That old song by Coin that Newton has always liked is playing softly beside them, and behind two sets of closed eyelids, colours are bursting brighter than usual. 

Epilogue

“Newton,”

“…”

“Newton, are you awake?”

“Hermann it is 2:32am what the fuck do you want?”

“We cannot continue to call our Jaeger Baby Driver.”

“Did you wake me up in the middle of the night to argue about this? Did you seriously do this to me? Because I will kick you out. You can sleep in your own room you horrible bastard, why can’t we fight about this in the morning?”

“We cannot call her Baby Driver, because it is essential that we change her name… to Baby Diver.”

“… I am so in love with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I owe much of the writing style of this fic, as well as post-drift effects, to the legendary CleanWhiteRoom. The quoted lyric is from LHC by the Superconducting Supercolliders, a fake band that's now real. 
> 
> I also owe a huge debt to hal_incandenza for dragging me into Pacific Rim with them. Please read their work if you haven't yet, particularly the recently finished Transducer! 
> 
> Newt's synesthesia is the same as my own; Hermann's particular colour associations are invented. I made the slight adjustment of changing Newt's birthplace to East Berlin for thematic reasons.


End file.
